Towards managed services : A case study of Scania IT

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine how Scania IT can apply the delivery model managed services in order to meet the increased demand of IT services. Managed services mean that organisations hand over specific IT operations to a service supplier. Focus in this study has been on sourcing of application support and maintenance. The study comprehends an analysis of the perspectives why, what, who and how of sourcing and the organisational and technical challenges following from implementation of managed services. The material analysed in this study is collected during interviews performed at Scania IT and a benchmarking study performed with external customers and suppliers of IT services. A benchmarking study was executed to learn from other organisation’s methods for managed service arrangements and apply these findings on a suitable method for Scania IT. Findings from the study show that incentives behind managed services are for example to keep up with the fast ongoing digitization and to get predictable IT costs. Suitable areas for managed services are activities that are not core and selection of supplier is partly based on volumes and trust. Identified organisational challenges involve dedicating resources for the managed service arrangements, align the employees’ objectives with the organisation’s, handling the concerned employees and to let go of control. Technical challenges found in this study are to create sufficient volumes, insufficient documentation, to select suitable areas for sourcing and to set up suitable quality metrics.